


A Whole Wide World To Search

by Abraxas (Qlippoth)



Series: A500 [7]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Community: Avatar_500, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-25
Updated: 2020-01-25
Packaged: 2021-02-27 13:20:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22397707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Qlippoth/pseuds/Abraxas
Summary: Katara and Zuko develop a very unique way to cope with the death of the Avatar.
Series: A500 [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/20622
Kudos: 14





	A Whole Wide World To Search

Originally Published July 30, 2010

* * *

The ship was tiny. Outdated. Ancient. It was the last of its kind, taken out of salvage, to fill a void left by the war. Only a few understood what it meant to Zuko as it carried the leader of the nation about the world.

Zuko waved at Sokka and Suki and with that the ship left the port.

"To the Republic City?" asked the helmsman.

"No!" replied the firelord. Suddenly stirred awake as if out of a dream. As he watched the great Northern city withdrew, swallowed by mountains of white. "That place disturbed the Lady. Go south. Slowly. Slowly."

Zuko retreated into a stateroom - the daylight outside juxtaposed the onyx inside as the cold battled the warm interior.

Katara stood by the window.

"A hundred thirty seven were born that day."

She held the necklace against the light. That wooden monk's rosary. Its length wrapped about her arm.

"If it was that day. Or the next. Or the next. Who is to say? The spirit waits and chooses its time."

Katara let the ornament unwind and fall into Zuko's hand. He, too, examined the symbol. He recalled the first Aang wore it. That simplicity was a token of humility. It seemed impossible to believe they lived through the end of that era.

"I don't know what I want. The Avatar is endless yet Aang is gone. Sometimes I want to find him. Sometimes I do not want to find him. Maybe ... it's not about the Avatar at all...."

Katara looked into a cup of tea Zuko made as if to decipher a meaning out of its swirl of bubble.

"Maybe you want to find comfort in the knowledge that it continues. Maybe the search gives you a purpose to live."

"Yes." She sipped the tea. "Sorry I dragged you into it."

"Don't." They held hand in hand - then their fingers crawled up toward their elbows. "Who would you have asked, anyway? Not too many left that know how to hunt the Avatar."

She smiled and without a thought he replied.

"Let's keep going south. To the Pole. To the Swamp. You know there are water tribe people all over the world. The Avatar could have been reborn anywhere."

Gripping their elbows - and dragging their bodies together - it was the strangest embrace yet neither acknowledged nor broke it. It was inner intimacy expressed outwardly by the defiance of the subconscious.

"Yes - yes, you're right. A whole wide world to search. And you. And me." 

Their smiles broadened.

They looked at the wooden airy necklace - that manifestation of kinship - as it twisted about their arms. 

And so they sailed not in search of the Avatar but a reason to continue.


End file.
